William Wynne

What's New

June 13, 2005

At the Hangar

Before we left on our current trip, we were working like dogs in the hangar to send out a large number of orders and
advance some R&D on specific items that builders have asked us to look into. We are barely six weeks from
Oshkosh and there are never enough hours in the day. Occassionally, when we don't have a Web update for a few weeks or
the voice mailbox is full, we'll get an e-mail from someone assuming we're relaxing, or have been vacationing. In all likelihood,
just the opposite is true. Our periods of greatest productivity and most creative work occur during stretches where
we will work 20 or 30 back to back 18 hour days. As you can imagine, very little public documentation goes on at
times like that. A good example of this is the fact that I'm dicating this update to Grace Ellen as we're working on
Cleone Markwell's 601 late at night in his hangar in Illinois. As a small aviation business, updating our Web site
has to take a back seat to the work at hand.

New Tool In Action

I encourage everyone to use a 13" Van's FP-13 spinner. Anyone who's ever installed a spinner knows what a challenge it
is to turn really true. In the above photo we have rigged a Corvair case with a crankshaft in it, a
Prop Hub, and an FP-13 spinner. Inside the spinner is one of our Warp Drive Front Bulkheads and Crushplates. This
assembly allows the spinner to be used directly with a Warp Drive propeller. As a favor to builders who have purchased the
Bulkhead from us, we offered to pilot drill their spinners to ensure they run true. In the photo above you can see a dial
indicator. The FP-13 is a very accurately made part. Without much trouble, we can get them to track with 15 to 20/1000ths
runout. In terms of spinner accuracy, this constitutes perfection. Those with sharp eyes will read Gordon Alexander's
name written on the inside of the spinner. Gordon is a Corvair/Pegzair builder from Minnesota and his spinner is already
in his hands as you read this.

Above is a look at the Front Bulkhead Assembly. It is deeply dished and provides great support for the spinner while
mating up to the Warp Drive's 2" thick aluminum hub. The bulkhead is made of Fiberglas, the ideal material to mate with
the Fiberglas spinner. I'm a big fan of Fiberglas spinners; I've never cracked any fiberglass spinner I've owned or used.
Conversely, every aluminum spinner for experimental aircraft I've ever used for any length of time has cracked. However,
it's very important to note that you should never run prop mounting bolts through a fiberglass bulkhead. Over time,
the fiberglass will compress, and the bolts will lose their tension. When you look closely, you'll see that the
bulkhead is mounted to the black crushplate but it is relieved so that the six prop mounting bolts bear only on the
crushplate, not on the bulkhead.

Here's the backside of the same assembly, above. The black piece is a 3/8" thick anodized aluminum crushplate. This is
required on all propeller installations, both wood and Warp Drive. The three Phillips screws
that you can see are countersunk NAS screws. In the previous picture you can see these nuts on them. These clamp
the fiberglass bulkhead to the crushplate. But the majority of the centering work is done by a 3/16" lip molded in the
fiberglass around the outside edge of the crushplate. Although it may look like a simple part, it took countless hours
to create the prototype, flight test it, alter the pattern, turn the mold on a lathe, and develop the correct layup
technique. The prototype flew on our 601 all year, and the rest of the work consumed many full days of work spread
amongst the skilled members of the Hangar Gang over the past year. It is one of the more basic of
our products, but I'd like to use it to point out the amount of effort my crew puts in to making sure that proven,
perfected equipment is available to Corvair builders. If you often read of 18-hour days spent in our hangar and
wonder where the time is invested, several hundred man hours in the past year went into these bulkheads.

The crowning pieces for the Rear Accessory Cases, above. In the
May '05 Update, I mentioned we were catching
up on back orders delinquent due to hard to get parts. In response, we received an e-mail asking if Corvair parts
were hard to get due to my relentless popularization of the engine over the past 15 years. So let me clarify. The AN weld
fittings above were on national backorder - from our local auto parts
stores to Summit Racing. This is a standard automotive racing part, not a Corvair specific part.
So we had them machined locally. Corvair parts are readily available from
Our Online Catalog or from Clark's Corvairs Parts, and their phone number is in our
Corvair Conversion Manual.

Here is a photo of one of our Top Covers. It's installed on Steve Glover's KR engine.
Steve, who is converting from VW to Corvair power, is planning on a very high degree of finish in his engine compartment.
This is how we like to build them too, on occasion. Kevin took some time and polished one of our standard 6061 T6 covers.
Note the Monkey holding the camera in the reflection above. In person, you could read the number 16 on the ruler in
reverse image.

I made this new seat for the Turbo Skycoupe, above. Every pilot in the hangar is taller than
Gary, so he will be sitting on mucho Temperfoam while the rest of our heads will no longer stretch
the fabric above us.

Our ever popular shirts are back, above. Corvair Flyer subscribers can get them for $10 by sending
a check or money order payable to William Wynne, P.O. Box 290802, Port Orange, FL 32129-0802, for U.S. delivery (add $15 for
international S&H, including Canada). If you don't subscribe to our newsletter, you ought to for deals just like this that
will pay for the cost of The Flyer if you take advantage of them, not
to mention the technical news and flying reports in each issue. But you can still wear the
shirt by clicking on our T-shirt Page or sending in $17. Thank you to California Woody, a Flyer
subscriber who purchased four. We'll have the black ZenVair shirts out soon as well.

If you're a KR builder, you've probably heard that we're working on a special Corvair cowling specifically for the
KR-2 and KR-2S. This will be a complete epoxy fiberglass vacuum bagged cowling. It is designed specifically to use
round inlets, the Van's 13" FP-13 spinner and our Front Starter System. It will split top and
bottom, like a standard KR cowl. We made the plug and the next step was to have a mold made. When I need a mold, there's only one guy I go to: Tim Hall, below.
I've known him for a long time. We go back to my years of building Lancair IVPs. One of the few good, lasting things about
that era of aviation was the opportunity for many of us to learn a great deal about high end composites. Tim's specialty
was mold work and tooling. In the long run, he parlayed his skills into his current job: manufacturing parts for the
turbine helicopter industry. Since we're old friends, I can still get him to utilize his skills in support of grassroots
aviation.

Above and below is the Sensenich propeller we delivered to a customer
the morning of June 10 on our way to the SAA Gathering in Urbana, Ill. We'll include an update on propeller testing
in the next Hangar Update. As an engine building shop, we enjoy OEM status with Sensenich
and have direct access to their engineering department. As a company, they are known for having excellent customer relations,
as well as offering first class products. After some discussion with them, I purchased this propeller to test on
several flying KRs. It is my goal to rapidly test a few of these props on flying
Corvair KRs so that following builders will have proven guidelines and the option of ordering the right prop the
first time from Sensenich. I have carefully followed the props on planes already flying, and in many cases, they leave
a lot to be desired. Although we don't own a KR, I'm willing to spend money for R&D to make sure that the
combination is maximized and easy for other builders to put together and enjoy. Sensenich props are CNC machined, made
to the same quality standards as their certified props. They're readily available in quantity. They are not cheap; this
particular model costs $725. But the fact that they're precision machined, and we're doing the R&D means that you can
order the right prop for your KR the first time.

You can see the urethane leading edge all around the tip, above. We flight tested a Sensenich 64x47 just like
this on our own 601 earlier in the year. It was very smooth running, and had impressive
top speed numbers. However, it could not match the Warp Drive for raw rate of climb
on the 601 airframe. For this reason, we're sticking with the 2-blade 66" Warp as our recommended prop for a
Corvair powered 601. However, faster airplanes like KRs and Dflys are prime candidates for Sensenich wood props.